Morelia-Linares 2007 round-1

Morelia-Linares 2007 February, 17-25 [16:30 EST]   The Morelia - Linares tournament takes place 16th Feb - 11th March 2007. The Morelia half takes place 17th-25th February and Linares 2nd-10th March. The GMs participants are: Topalov, Anand, Leko, Svidler, Aronian, Ivanchuk (*) , Morozevich and Carlsen.

Preview R-1 by Mig Greengard at Chessninja.com

I'm sticking with the name of the tournament, Linares, as with Corus, instead of the geographical sites. (God forbid we use a handy hybrid like, say, MoraLin or LinaLia. What a dire, dire insult that would be.) Round one begins at 15:30 local time in Morelia, Mexico. That's 4:30pm EST, 1:30pm PST, and 21:30GMT. I'll be doing live audio commentary on ICC Chess.FM©™® from the start of the round. My GM co-host today is Gregory "Kentucky Fried" Kaidanov. If you aren't an ICC member you can get a free trial account here. As they say, once you've had chess audio, there's no going back. There are also my infamous daily trivia contests, but this time with a difference: real prizes! The winner of the tough third question will win a year's subscription to New In Chess! Details here.

GM Carlsen defeats GM Morozevich in the round-1. Photo: John B. Henderson

The first round starts out with a bang. The world #1 has white against the #2 in Topalov-Anand. Then we have Ivanchuk-Leko, Svidler-Aronian, Carlsen-Morozevich. This glacially slow Mexican website is claiming live game webcast. (Go to the "Linares-Morelia" menu and then "Partidas en vivo".) Be afraid, be very afraid. John Henderson is in Morelia for the ICC, so if worst comes to worst we'll have him relaying the moves by phone in a Scottish brogue. I'm sure there won't be any errors with that foolproof system. The Spanish soloajedrez site will have the games in the Linares half.

Swapping Ivanchuk in for Radjabov added someone with more career Linares titles than everyone else in the field combined. Anand won in 1998 and Aronian won last year. Ivanchuk has three wins, albeit none in the past 10 years (89, 91, 95). Now on to the fool's game of predictions... +3 should win clear first in this field unless Ivanchuk and/or Morozevich totally melts down and skews the spread. I'll put Topalov and Aronian ahead of Anand, who just hasn't looked himself at classical chess lately. Leko is also bit of an enigma. He's been something of a choke artist in the last year; with two better final rounds he would have been the big winner of 2006. I don't expect plus scores from Ivanchuk, Morozevich, or Carlsen. It would be great to see more ambition from Svidler. If he doesn't show it he'll finish even when someone blasts his Grunfeld.

After round-1

Boy am I annoyed. I swear on a stack of Kingpins that the first version of my preview yesterday included the sentence, "Today may be Carlsen's best chance at a win because of how ambitious Morozevich is with black." Damn. As the saying goes, the worst decisions are the ones we don't make. I give myself a high chicken factor for yanking that one. Just like at Corus a month ago we have a surprise leader after the first round. At Corus Radjabov proved it wasn't a fluke and he hung on to tie for first. Carlsen won't do that, but hey, he's leading Linares! I duly acknowledge that I wrote I'd rather see a more accomplished player in his place.

Carlsen played a shocking knight sacrifice against Moro's antique King's Indian and won when Morozevich first played wildly and then lost the handle in the endgame. A deserved win for the young Norwegian, who showed the aggression he's been lacking with the white pieces. Black's endgame play was unpredictable even for Morozevich. 40..f4 cost him a second pawn and even then he had drawing chances. Then he allowed f4 and it was probably just a matter of time. Early in the game his flamboyant 15..f5 gave the piece back to play against the trapped bishop on g2. There were a raft of more, umm, sane moves you could imagine a Leko playing to keep the piece. My ICC Chess.FM co-host Gregory Kaidanov expected 15..Nf5 to blockade the pawn. We also looked at 15..b6. An exciting battle to be sure, and Carlsen's third win against Morozevich in four games.

The big Topalov-Anand showdown followed their QID from Corus until Topalov varied first with 14.Nxe4 instead of 14.a4. Kaidanov and everyone else was wondering if Vishy was really going to play the 14.a4 Nd5 that earned him such a horrible loss last month, and we'll have to keep wondering. Anand equalized with precise play and Topalov, somewhat surprisingly, decided not to play on. Svidler-Aronian was another Corus flashback, with Svidler in having Anand's memories. They repeated 23 moves of Marshall theory and yet again it proved to be the toughest of defenses to break down. Aronian found a cute pin structure that White couldn't escape.

Ivanchuk livened things up against Leko after a dull-looking Scotch Game to begin. His 18.a4! deflection shot was very nice work. Kaidanov thought Leko was in deep trouble but I figured he'd be okay for two reasons. One, Ivanchuk was down to seconds for 15 moves and two, as I wrote years ago, one of the surest ways to lose a chess game is to sac a piece against Peter Leko. The guy defends like a mama grizzly bear with a newborn cub. He found the essential moves to force Ivanchuk to take the repetition. The game ended with exactly one second on Chucky's clock. Had Leko avoided the perpetual with (the inferior) 24..Be6 it's almost certain Ivanchuk would have lost on time. Since there's no increment in Linares someone less scrupulous than Peter Leko might even have tried something objectively losing like 25..Be6 in order to flag his opponent. By the way, I believe our live broadcast had the move order with 18..Rxa4 19.Rxa4 Qxa4 20.Nf6+. That just transposes the score I see everywhere now with White's 19th and 20th moves juxtaposed. But it would have allowed for the interesting try 20.g5.

As predicted, and as a dead yak could have predicted, the official website in Mexico went down like a lead piñata even before the games started. The ICC's John Henderson was there in the press room (the second one, long story) typing us the moves manually all day. It was enough to give one flashbacks to the Braingames press room in London 2000. And we've already had computer theft too! They'll have to ramp up capacity and rip the guts out of that awful site to have any hope of survival today.

The "Ninja boards" have a prediction thread and daily round coverage.

Chess.FM coverage
ICC will have daily live commentary of the second major of 2007, hosted by Mig Greengard, who will be joined by former World Chess Champion, GM Susan Polgar, with IM Jennifer Shahade, GM Jon Speelman, GM Larry Christiansen, GM Joel Benjamin, and GM Gregory Kaidanov.

R	Replay (english)	L	Live (english)	L	Live (español)	L	Live (français)

Sun, Feb 18 - R2 LISTEN HOST GUEST L 16:30 EST Mig Greengard GM Gregory Kaidanov L 16:30 EST IM Alejo de Dovitiis R 23:00 EST Mig Greengard GM Gregory Kaidanov Mon, Feb 19 - R3 LISTEN HOST GUEST L 16:30 EST Mig Greengard GM Jon Speelman L 16:30 EST GM Fernando Peralta R 23:00 EST Mig Greengard GM Jon Speelman On the server: Type "tell webcast english" or type "tell webcast espanol"

You have more information in the ICC LIVE COVERAGE page.
Download the PGN games from TWIC.
Consult the ICC Chess.FM lineup.
Daily updates in the ICC Morelia-Linares section.
Read the rules and prizes of the New in Chess Trivia Contest.
Also, visit the official website (Spanish).
Subscribe today to the New in Chess magazine for only $44.

The New in Chess Trivia Contest! Chess.FM [16:30 EST] ICC and New in Chess presents The New in Chess Trivia Contest! Tune-in to Mig on ICC Chess.FM for our round-by-round coverage of Morelia-Linares 2007, and each round you could win a 1-year subscription to the world's best chess magazine. For more information and rules, visit our help page.

Milo, Russianbear and then Grotesque was the winners in the round-1 for the month and the NIC subscription.